


The Noble Hour

by CheloniaArise



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2686670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheloniaArise/pseuds/CheloniaArise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if a little thing like a biological metacrisis could stop Donna Noble. (It does present challenges, though.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Noble Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Comments appreciated, lovely readers.

11:49 Donna is tired of arguing with her mother. To be precise, she always exists in a state of tiredness of arguing with her mother, but just at this moment the tiresomeness of the situation peaked and had to be noted out loud. She is going to bed, she announces.

11:53 Donna brushes her teeth. At first, she brushes her teeth angrily, putting much more than the dentist-approved pressure on them. But when the anger fades she notices she's feeling strangely giddy. She puts down her brush, and she's giving herself a stupid grin in the mirror.

11:56 Donna is changing for bed. The feeling of anticipation is spreading tangibly to her fingertips. It doesn't make much sense that she feels as thrilled about the prospect of going to bed as children typically feel at the prospect of not going to bed. But may as well run with it.

11:58 The door locks itself, and something shifts silently inside it. The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door right now. They haven't tried, but her grandad did once.

11:59 Donna is in bed. Something is going to happen.

12:00 The timer circuit goes off in the pocket watch by the bedside table- the pocket watch that Donna can't see. It flips open. Power and knowledge and the burning heart of the universe come streaming out of it into Donna's head.

12:01 Donna is impaled by the light. She twists in her bed as the fire burns through her, changing rather than destroying. She screams out something in a language only one living man would understand. The walls of her room have been soundproofed.

12:03 Donna has work to do. “Lucius Caecilius,” she says, which is the code to turn off the perception filters. Her computer is rebooting into its secret partition. She plucks her sonic probe from behind an embroidery frame on the wall. Last month she used subliminal messaging to get her daytime self to emroider NICE TRY, SPACEMAN on it, but it came out NICE TRY SPICEMAN, so either her hypnosis skills or her embroidery skills need work.

12:06 Her computer has been gathering intelligence in the background for the past month, and it starts scrolling through the extraterrestrial news. A little party of Anoloids is camped out in a bakery in Islington, selling rhubarb and nanite pie that turns ordinary Londoners into their helpless, rhubarb craving minions. A party of Optimites is stalking the city with mercenaries in tow, looking for their Crown Princex, who they believe was kidnapped by a human. And just this morning, a tourist ship (the “Amber Dream”) from Stellar Cluster 6 was disabled by a solar flare and is drifting slowly into the sun. They picked a good day to do it, all things considered.

12:10 Donna sonics her mobile phone onto the Optimite frequency and bellows at their startled Primary. “Major Noble. Terra Security Force. What do you think you're doing?” she fumes. “Stomping around London with plasma projectors? I should arrest the lot of you.” They fall for it, which demonstrates that Optimites are terrible poker players. She goes on. “Your Princex is already in custody, and thon will be returned within the hour, but only if you behave. So watch yourself.” Then she hangs up before they can protest.

12:13 She gets a pop up reminder that the Doctor is going to be in Aberdeen tomorrow. One of the old ones- the one with the scarf. She puts in an order online to have some of those jelly sweets he likes hand delivered to him on behalf of the “Friends of Gallifrey.” She also hacks a security camera so she can see the look on his face. If it's good she'll send it to the current Doctor too.

12:15 She downloads the specs for the Anoloid nanofabricators and starts writing a virus. But that only occupies her hands, so while she's typing she contacts the captain of the Amber Dream. “Galactic Rescue,” she says. “No time to give you my credentials. Just pipe me through to your ship's engineer.”

12:20 The virus is finished. She uploads it to the robotic pigeon she built last summer, and sends it off to Islington to seek rhubarb.

12:22 She talks the Amber Dream's engineering team through an engine overhall. They should be able to use the liquor in their bar as a fuel source to microjump out of the Sun's gravitational pull. She flirts outrageously with the lead engineer, who blushes an adorable shade of teal.

12:25 The Optimites call her back. She doesn't let them say anything. “I told you an hour, sunshine. It's been 15 minutes. Piss off!” She hangs up again and goes back to embarrassing the engineer.

12:32 She leaves the Amber Dream team to their work. Sensors indicate that her pigeon has crashed through the window of the Anoloid bakery and buried its beak-port in some pie. The virus propogates through the whole nanoecology in seconds, placing everything under Donna's control. The nanites start removing themselves from the zombies' brains. But while they're doing that, they also command the zombies to stop guarding the Anoloids and start hunting through the city for the Optimite Princex. Donna pre-records a gloating message for the Anoloids in case she doesn't get the chance to gloat in real time later.

12:35 She spends some time working on the spatiotemporal portal she keeps under her bed. This whole remote operation thing is great, but it would be even better if she could leave the room without having to worry about getting back in time. It's an ongoing project.

12:44 Her hand trembles and she drops her sonic probe. It's starting early tonight.

12:46 She puts the portal away under the bed and stashes her probe behind the embroidery frame. Back to the crises of the night. One of the rhubarb zombies found the Princex in a movie theater. Thon had just sat through four showings of some third rate American romantic comedy in horrified fascination, and apparently it had been too much for thons brain. Waking thon up would take too long, so Donna tells the zombie to carry thon out of the theater and hire a cab. Pain flares up suddenly in her head, but she doesn't have time to pay attention to it.

12:50 Donna transmits the location of the Anoloid bakery to the Optimites. “We've located the parties responsible for taking your Princex. Go ahead and take them into custody, but no shooting unless you have to, understand? The Princex is on route and will be delivered delivered delivered delivered after the situation is under control.” The Optimite Primary is very grateful and assumes her verbal glitch is a human cultural quirk. Bless thons alien heart or heart equivalent. She spends a minute or two forging some evidence good enough to make sure thon takes the Anoloids off-planet for someone else to deal with.

12:54 The Amber Dream microjumps to safety. The captain calls back. She's crying tears of relief, but she still wants to keep this professional. “Thank you, Galactic Rescue. I don't know what we would have done without you.” Donna gives her a big grin and a salute, because at this point in the night there's not much chance of her voice working right.

12:57 She tries to stand up, but her legs won't carry her. Her head feels like a balloon about to pop. She shoves her chair over to the bed, and manages to tip herself over onto it. She left this too long tonight. No such thing as a stable metacrisis. She wriggles forward until her head touches the pillow.

12:58 Her mind is getting fuzzy, pain and heat swallowing her other thoughts. Her eyes fix on NICE TRY SPICEMAN and she laughs at the memory it calls up. That night when the Doctor thought she was going to roll over and die just because a few petajoules of Time Lord energy were burning up her brain. As if inevitable imminent death were an unusual sort of problem for Donna and the Doctor.

12:59 The perception filters reactivate. The chameleon arch lowers itself over her head. Donna screams again. The light leaves her and goes to wait in the pocket watch for the month it will take her brain to repair itself. The seal on the door unlocks. The computer turns itself off.

1:00 The dezombification program finishes, and the rhubarb fans of Islington wake up confused. The pre-recorded message bids the Anoloids a cheerful “So long,” before the Optimite mercenaries take them into custody. The Princex is too embarrassed by thons unexpected hibernation to say anything about it, though no doubt thon will at the trial. The crew and passengers of the Amber Dream hold their loved ones close.

1:01 Donna sleeps.


End file.
